


Discourse

by Littlebiscuits



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Dubious Consent, Flirtatious Threats, M/M, Radio Calls, Religious Themes, Threats, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-14 23:11:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15399657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlebiscuits/pseuds/Littlebiscuits
Summary: In which John Seed just wants Rook to talk to him, is that too much to ask?





	Discourse

Rook isn't entirely sure how John finds out his frequency. He suspects Eden's Gate have people loyal to Joseph in town, but he's not going to say anything, people are paranoid enough already, even suggesting that would probably get someone shot within the hour.

But one minute John's giving grand speeches about atonement and sacrifice through loudspeakers and official Eden's Gate channels, and the next he's rumbling quietly at Rook from the holster at his belt.

The first time that happens it startles him, though the only person around to witness it is Boomer. Who seems to have become more than used to human voices coming from nowhere, because he just grumbles complaint and rolls over.

Rook's the one who has to unlatch the thing and lift it, both the focus and object of John's attention.

"Did you enjoy your baptism, Deputy? I know I did. Some people might say I was a little overenthusiastic. You might say that even, not unfairly, I'll admit. But I take my work very seriously, and by all accounts you were especially resistant to being cleansed."

People are usually calling for help through Rook's radio, giving him curt demands, rolling out information or barking orders. But John's voice is a slow drawl, curious and friendly, strangely intimate for all the threat he knows it poses. Rook hovers his finger over the button, but eventually decides it's probably best if he doesn't encourage him. If he doesn't acknowledge him. He suspects that the one thing John Seed honestly hates is to be ignored.

John waits a long time for a reply, before eventually sighing, disgruntled. His tone sharpens a little, edges that weren't there before. 

"Though you refused our gracious hospitality, spurned our offer of truth, smacked at our outstretched hands." There's a hard noise, some object moved, or dropped in the background. Before John sighs again, an exhale that sounds forced. "But we are forgiving, Joseph is forgiving, and you've simply left me an opportunity to acquire you again, an opportunity to convince you. You've give me another chance, and I don't intend to waste it." 

Rook thinks he's finished, that John is content to send him vague threats and promises of recapture and confession, before leaving him to his liberation and violence. But he only gets ten feet before the radio clicks again.

"Joseph said you were special and I didn't believe him. I thought you were just like everyone else."

There's a stretch of silence, though Rook can still hear John breathing, channel held open.

"I was wrong," John says at last. "I should have trusted him. I should have had faith in him."

Rook's fairly certain that no matter how many times John tells him that he's special it's something closer to a threat than anything else. Because he knows he's not imagining the way that the peggies are even more insistent, more determined, more aggressive in their pursuit of him. Though some of their methods of capture seem reckless to the point of lethality. A rudeness he makes them regret in a variety of ways. Until the spaces in his vest, and the loops in his belt are all empty.

John's voice pesters him so often Rook's starting to feel like he's making a conscious decision to bring him on missions with him. Up to the point where he has to turn the radio off, and even then he can still hear his slow, considering drawl. As if John is determined to get a response, to make Rook talk to him.

Rook refuses, if only to listen to John Seed swing wildly between angry, offended spite and gentle, persuasive coaxing. 

"I'm very impressed with you, did I ever tell you that?"

John's voice is strangely friendly this morning, all warmth and amusement. Gentle, persuasive coaxing it is then.

"You are an impressive man. To see everything that you've accomplished. I see now that my earlier assertion that you were a senseless brute was unfair, though you do have a certain flair for brutality, when the situation requires it. No, you are a man of determination, a man with drive and purpose. I see that now."

Rook briefly thinks about switching him off, letting him talk to just himself, and maybe get it all out of his system. But it's probably a good idea to keep half an ear on his rambling. Since the man's already proven that he's quite willing to share his intentions. That maybe he gets a kick out of watching the world try and avoid whatever he has planned. Because John's smart enough to hate everyone else's stupidity, but still desperate enough to need them anyway. Rook thinks John wants approval and attention as much as his brother does.

"How did you come to be here, at this moment in time? Joseph thinks it's divine will that set you in our path. That you were meant to be here, that you were mean to challenge us, or to test us, or even to join us. A Herald of destruction to clear a path, a hammer to join our family. I would like to believe that, I would like to believe that you're here for a purpose. What is that purpose I wonder?"

Rook finds the radio in his hand without making a conscious choice to pick it up.

"My purpose is apparently to listen to you endlessly ramble on."

"Deputy," John draws out, soft and pleased, as if it's a joy to hear his voice over the radio. As if John thinks making him talk is somehow a win.

"You talk too much," Rook tells him.

 

~

 

Rook is taking advantage of the quiet for once, sitting on the hood of an abandoned car, eating a cereal bar while the birds circle the death he's left scattered around the old farmhouse. The Eden's Gate flag draped over the entrance is on fire, flames and smoke curling up in the early morning breeze.

"Why do you pull so hard against this?" 

John's voice is all softness at his waist. It seems ironic somehow, a gentle coaxing to give in to a cult of violence, when he's surrounded by so many bodies.

"Why do you fight so hard, Deputy? Why do you resist the promise of salvation?"

Rook sets a boot on the ground, lifts the radio.

"Why do you enjoy cutting into people so much?"

John sighs at him, clearly frustrated.

"You should come to church with me. Then you'd understand. It's not cruelty, it's not violence for the sake of violence. We're saving them, we're saving everyone and it's tiring, thankless, dirty work but we do it because we care, because we are the only ones prepared to. We do it because we are willing, though we may be hated and shunned and misunderstood."

"You don't think maybe the fact that an entire county is resisting you is a hint that you've gone a little far past saving souls, John? I think you're just indulging yourself now."

There's a hiss of displeasure, a crack like something set down too hard.

But then John laughs, as if he's caught Rook trying to bait him into an angry response.

"Everyone suffers," he says quietly, an excuse that Rook thinks he's made countless times. "And they've come to believe that's the way things are meant to be, they accept that that's the way the world works, and eventually they contribute to that suffering, or they accept it." John's voice is harder now, words bitten out, he doesn't bother to hide the frustration, the judgement. "They let their sins fester. They need someone to dig deep, to push in where they refuse to, where they can't see how rotten they are at the core, to draw out their sins for everyone to see, so they can face them, so they can let them go."

John stops talking for a while, and Rook takes the opportunity to scavenge for more ammo in the abandoned bunker nearby, to pack it into his bag and set off for the peggie camp he's already scouted, on the other side of the river.

When John comes back his voice is less harsh, more cajoling.

"I could show you the path to atonement," he offers. "I could lead you. We could walk it together. All you have to do is say yes." 

Rook makes an amused noise through the radio.

"I don't know, John. You say leading, but it sounds more like you're dragging people there kicking and screaming."

"But everyone reaches paradise in the end," John counters, as if the screaming is sometimes a necessary step. A step he doesn't mind taking, and there's an honesty in that, Rook thinks.

At the start of all this Rook hadn't been sure whether John was just a sadist, pleased to have an outlet for his need to hurt people, or a true believer, doing what he had to do, what he thought God wanted him to do. But now he's fairly certain it's a mixture of both, and the pieces don't always join neatly. No matter how hard John bashes them together. He thinks there's a part of John that wants, or needs, to be hurt too, and that part fits even less well.

"There's a space for you, among the Chosen," John offers. "Come to confession, let me cleanse you, choose to walk with me. It's easier if you accept, if you walk the path with your eyes open."

Rook sinks into a crouch at the edge of the treeline, he can just see bearded figures drifting about down the slope in front of him.

"I like the path I'm on just fine," Rook tells him.

 

~

 

It had to happen eventually. The roads are watched in long stretches, blocked in others, helicopters flying back and forth hoping for a single sighting of him. The barest hint of movement in the woods, or pressed against the wooden struts of a tower, skirting the long bends of the river. Rook's been hunted for too long. It makes sense that he was going to get a Bliss bullet in the back of the neck at some point. Rolling the dice over and over, probability of being captured grinding all the way up to a hundred percent.

Rook goes down choking the life out of the peggie who tried to kneecap him.

He doesn't know if he killed him or not.

He wakes up tied to a chair, tight enough to feel when he leans away from the sudden light. There's a rolling thud of dizziness in his head that makes it hard to focus. The afterechoes of Bliss that leave you feeling like you've forgotten something important, or done something terrible.

But eventually he's looking at John Seed himself, all tight jeans, blue silk and painted arms.

"Deputy, I'm so pleased that you could join us." He does look pleased as well, smile stretching like Rook is an unexpected gift. The long handle of a steel sharpener rests in on hand, held loose and easy but Rook is smart enough to know that John having immediate access to something sharp is probably not a good thing.

"I don't think much of your invitation," Rook tells him, wincing when his own voice cuts through the back of his head. "Could have just said that you wanted me to visit."

John smiles, and the way he's watching Rook is indulgent but a little too sharp to be friendly. 

"Do you know how long I've waited for this opportunity. I had to be patient, which is not an easy task when you've been breaking everything, _everything_ that belongs to me." His smile goes tight, and Rook's pretty sure he's conflicted about how exactly he wants to punish Rook for that.

The sharpener tips in his direction.

"I knew I had to wait until you tried to slip through my fingers, so I could close my hand around you." He breathes a laugh, and leans back against the table behind him, one long line of slim tightness, boots crossed at the ankles. His hand swings the sharpener with a laziness that suggests he has more than a little experience dragging it back and forth through skin.

"Where's Hudson?" Rook asks.

John sighs, as if he's trying to make a point and Rook keeps changing the subject.

"She is my guest, and I have been a _perfect_ host. She however has been a very ungrateful and disruptive guest. Who has lost privileges and now remains locked in her room for the foreseeable future."

He frowns and tips his head.

"You assumed that she'd be here, as some sort of demonstration, or encouragement to make you behave?" John pushes off the table and walks towards him, stops close enough that their knees brush. "Do you need encouragement to behave?"

"You've tied me up, what trouble am I supposed to make?" Rook tugs at the ropes holding his wrists down, something of a show and tell. John's raised eyebrow tells him exactly what he thinks of Rook's ability to cause trouble. 

"Perhaps I just wanted to be alone with you," John says, half his mouth smiling. "Perhaps I didn't want witnesses."

The sharpener drags under Rook's jaw, just hard enough to leave a pale, scraped line but not break the skin. The gentlest sting that Rook refuses to tip his head away from, and John sees it, eyes gone soft. He draws the metal back slowly and smiles all the way.

John's knees push in between his thighs, make room for himself, destroying any notion Rook might have had that John's obsession with him is not sexual. That he isn't filling some need that Eden's Gate clamps shut with its rules and its condemnations.

"I have so much I want to share with you," John's voice has gone low and soft, bending at the waist so Rook can feel the warmth of him. "So much that I want to show you, now that you're a captive audience, now that you can't switch me off and ignore me when I'm trying to save your soul." 

"And you do hate to be ignored, don't you John? Always pushing yourself in uninvited -" Rook's knee knocks against John's. "Making yourself the centre of attention."

John leans in, tattooed hand curving under Rook's jaw, and he's waiting for the bite of fingers, the sting of violence, but they just hold, loose and warm.

"It can be a long road to salvation," John says. "But I will be with you every step of the way." He probably doesn't mean that to sound like a threat, the way it shakes out between smiles, all edges of need and anticipation. But Rook supposes it's as much of one as any other promise John has made in that tone of voice.

His hand slips away, and he walks to the table by the wall, to the shine of tools and the curl of old flesh nailed to the backboard. There's a breathy laugh when John lays his hands there, before lifting them and pressing them together, as if he can't work out where to start. 

He starts with a trip down memory lane, which Rook doesn't ask for, but explains a lot. It's a history of violence and addiction that still clearly has all its hooks in him. No matter how fiercely John talks about God and salvation. No matter how tightly he clings to Joseph's book and papers over his broken, bleeding insides. John didn't find freedom in saying yes, he just lost the ability to say no. The freedom to say no. 

And maybe that's part of the reason John is so fascinated with him. Rook is a contrary, stubborn man. He's good at saying no, at refusing, at making people stop.

John grasps his jaw again, tips his head up, and Rook's frown seems to amuse him. His fingers do dig a little this time, but it feels testing and indulgent, rather than angry.

John's radio interrupts them, a distraction, something that requires his attention. John's irritation is hot enough to feel. His hand slips away from Rook slowly, reluctantly, to return to the table and angrily pick it up.

" _What_?"

Joseph wants to see him, and Rook suspects Joseph is the one person John will not risk disappointing. 

The moment John leaves Rook shoves himself around, pushes back towards John's table of bad choices and finds the sharpest thing he can with stretching fingers. He cuts himself free and chokes the first peggie he sees for his gun, and his knife, and his belt full of ammunition.

Then he leaves John behind.

Because Rook knows he'll hate that even more.

 

~

 

It takes John six days to reach Rook through the radio again. He's changed frequency twice, he's gone out a handful of times with no radio at all, which is stupid of him, but the quiet had made a nice change. He'd lent Grace the one he'd been using, which had given her cause to send him pointed, quietly judging looks for an entire day. God knows what John had subjected her to, before she switched him off. Whether it had been angry ravings or aggressively veiled sexual threats, or gentle coaxing to come back to him and face confession.

Knowing John some twisted mixture of all three, tangled and flirtatious like John couldn't help himself, every emotion he felt raw and obvious and snarled up together. Rook can't even imagine trying to get through a day like that. But he's always been contained, feelings packed away neatly, refusing to let his emotions push him into stupid decisions. At least, that's what he'd always thought.

The youngest Seed eventually gets tired of Rook ignoring him. He starts grabbing people for spontaneous confessions along the river. And Rook's not sure whether that's an outlet for John's anger and frustration, or a petulant demand for Rook's attention.

But Rook gives in and jabs the radio button, tells John to stop throwing a tantrum, he's still here, he's still listening.

Rook expects John's voice to have taken on a flavour of fury after he acknowledges him, frustrated at Rook's continued ability to evade him, to outrun him, to refuse his attempts to save him, over and over. Instead he sounds breathless and delighted, as if Rook has made this a chase, as if his escape was just another way to win John's attention.

And Rook supposes he could have left the valley, he could have headed North, to the threat and brutality of Jacob's company, or East, to the hazy madness of Faith's. But something keeps him here, listening to John's many different voices. His soft but tightly restrained pleas for understanding, his seething, snapped-out fury when Rook breaks something of his, the soft, amused encouragement when Rook does something that surprises, or pleases him. And the low, breathless drag of his voice when Rook reminds him of all the things he can't have, but teases him with them anyway. 

And maybe Rook has made better decisions in his life. But something in him is fascinated by the desperation and the desire and the self-restraint that John keeps shredding to pieces every time Rook hits the button and talks to him. Something in him can't stop pushing at the whirling fucking maelstrom that is John Seed.

When he sets the radio down, Grace is watching him. 

She's probably his quietest companion, but she's surprisingly good at saying things without ever opening her mouth, at knowing where Rook wants her to be and what he wants her to do without him asking. He's not sure he appreciates that enough. But Rook's been ignoring her unspoken truths a lot lately. Long enough that she clearly feels compelled to offer them out loud.

"You shouldn't encourage him," she says simply. She's eyeing him from under her cap, water bottle tipped in his direction.

"You think I'm encouraging him?" Rook asks.

She gives him a look, almost more judgment in that than he gets from Joseph Seed himself.

"You know damn well you are," she says. "You've never been good at ignoring it when people needle you, and he needles the fuck out of you, all the time. And I've heard some of his messages to you, too many of them. He wants you for more than just confession. He thinks the two of you are meant to be or something, and I have no goddamn idea why that doesn't worry the shit out of you. But I'm pretty sure he's taking your lack of protest or explicit threats as some sort of fucked-up permission."

It's true that Rook hasn't made any real attempt to get John to stop, that he could probably try harder to rotate his radios regularly, to make it obvious that he's not available, that John doesn't have his attention.

But John has his attention.

"You're letting him, and it's not like you to let someone mess with you. He's a dangerous man to fuck with." Grace's look becomes more pointed. "In every sense of the word."

Rook opens his mouth and she waves him quiet.

"And I know that you're a dangerous man too. But John Seed is smart as a fucking snake and twice as crazy. you've already escaped from him once. I don't think you want to roll the dice on that again."

"You think it's going to explode in my face?" Rook asks, and he doesn't mean to smile, it just comes out.

Grace sighs and adjusts her hat.

"Don't things usually," she reminds him.

Which is a good point.

 

~

 

"Rook - can I call you Rook?" John asks. "Really, we've been through this enough times now that I think I've earned it. Though I feel like everyone calls you that, everyone uses it, it lacks _intimacy_."

Rook's tempted to ask if John wants them to be intimate, but he feels like maybe that's a little on the nose. He's not sure if John even realises how quietly desperate he sounds sometimes. No matter what Grace thinks, Rook knows damn well he shouldn't be talking to him, he shouldn't be encouraging this. Whatever the hell this is, whatever it's become. Hope County has been teaching him things about himself, or changing him in some way. It's made a lot of things easier than they should be. Rook's not sure he remembers how to be the person he used to be, who definitely wouldn't have wanted any part of this. The new version of him - he thinks he sees it as a challenge, something he wants to get his hands on, to see if he can survive it.

"What's your first name?" John pushes. "Will you tell me that? Will you let me use it?"

"You can call me Rook, John." Rook says, aware that he's tacitly agreeing to be a party to this fascination John has with him. 

John hums pleasure at the resistance.

"You're going to tell me eventually, even if I have to choke it out of your mouth."

John's voice is flirtatious, even if the words are anything but.

Rook thinks John probably knows exactly how to do this like everyone else. That he knows how to fake the encouraging, flirtatious smiles, the heartfelt compliments. Though Rook has to wonder if he was ever good at it, or if people were smart enough to see the cracks underneath, everything a little too wide and too sharp. He wonders if John's eyes and his money, and his success made it matter less. The moments of uncertainty and violence papered over with expensive gifts and promises, and more false smiles.

But Rook doesn't get that John. He gets the John underneath, all sharp, vibrating edges, and teeth, always an inch away from biting down. Rook gets to see all the broken, fucked-up parts of him, shifting between need and violence, easily wounded, too raw and complicated not to be honest, not to be the real him. Unable to pretend any more, or sick of pretending to the world, and expecting the real him to be rejected for being rotten all the way through. And maybe John hates him a little, for being something he wants, when he's been forbidden to sin, when he's already torn free that civilised mask that could have seduced him.

He may hate him, but he still wants him, that's clear enough.

 

~

 

It's almost midnight, the world is quiet for a change, and Rook is drinking under the bright circle of a full moon. It's late enough for most of the resistance to be sprawled out somewhere, only a handful of people up to watch for opportunistic peggies in the woods, or white trucks on the road.

"What do you do on a night like this, hmm? When I can't hear you scratching at our foundations."

Rook should know by now that it's never too late for John to call.

"Were you thinking about me John," he asks, almost teasing.

"I'm always thinking about you." John admits, a moment of quiet, tired honesty. But there's a bite to the words, as if John is expecting to be chastised for his obsession, or maybe he already has been. The only part of the Eden's Gate script he's thrown away, all selfish, guilty lust.

Rook's not sure what the punishment was, or will be. But John doesn't seem to have any intention of stopping.

"I think about carving your sins into you," John says, soft like he doesn't want anyone to overhear. "Or of laying them under your skin, reminders in blood and ink. Of bringing it all out so you can be absolved. I think about you encouraging me, of the noises you'd make. It keeps me awake at night. But I don't want you to struggle under me, I want you to come to me. I want you to ask me, to take my hands and lay them on your skin and let me _show_ you."

Rook is surprised to hear John's quiet laughter stream over the radio. It's breathy and soft, like he's laughing at himself.

"That's ironic don't you think, in relieving you of your sins I'll be indulging in one of my own."

Rook holds the radio for so long without speaking that John assumes he's not going to reply, hits the button again.

"But I don't want anyone else to do it," he says at last, tight and unhappy, like the thought of it upsets him. "My brother thinks I'm being too soft with you. He thinks I'm being too generous, waiting for you to come to me, encouraging you, _indulging_ you. When you are being so wilful and destructive. He thinks I should accept that you're not going to come willingly, that every word out of your mouth is a refusal, that you are too intent on sin and destruction to listen. He thinks I've given you enough freedom to run, and now I should pull on the leash." 

There's a breath, a sigh, as if John's thinking about it.

He's quiet for a long minute.

"I'm not going to pretend the thought isn't appealing. That I'm not impatient for it, that I don't want you under my hands, confessing to me, letting me mark you, so I can wash you clean, so I can save you, so I can touch you - but maybe this isn't your punishment, maybe it's mine." John's voice goes quiet, all the enthusiasm drained out of it, before it cuts off completely, and the radio is utterly silent.

It feels like a finality.

Rook stares at it for a long time, fingers squeezing gently. Eventually he lifts it, hits the button.

"Tell me," he says simply.

There's a crackle on the other end, the clatter of something dropped and reacquired.

"What -" John's voice is breathless, rattle-sharp. He swallows and tries again. "What would you like me to tell you?"

"Tell me what you want to do to me. Tell me how you want me to confess."

The button clicks, once, twice, but no words come, as if John can't make any.

"Tell me exactly," Rook demands. "Don't leave anything out."

John makes a noise, soft and cracked open, like he's fallen in love.


End file.
